Many types of agricultural seeds are handled numerous times before the seed is actually planted. The seed may be coated with a variety of treatments, including fungicides, insecticides, or nutritional supplements. In treating seed, some of the seeds are inevitably damaged by rough handling.
Agricultural seeds are often delivered to the grower in bags. Bags are heavy and difficult to handle. In many cases, seed is delivered to the grower in large boxes or hoppers because this is a more economical way for the grower to use the seed than bags.
Conventional row crop seed handling is performed with a wide variety of boxes and hoppers. These boxes and hoppers are used for storing both treated and untreated agricultural seed, and also for carrying the seed to the growers' fields. In many instances, an auger or some other method has been used to dispense the seed out of the box and into the grower's planting equipment. U.S. Pat. No. 6,120,233 discloses a seed carrier and dispenser using an auger discharge. U.S. Pat. No. 5,915,312 discloses the use of a pneumatic seed delivery system. The uses of some of the methods of transporting seeds, such as an auger, are known to cause damage to the seed.
Damaged seed means a poor plant stand, which in turn means loss of yield and profit potential for the grower. To further aggravate this situation, the advent of biotechnology has driven the value and cost of seeds higher and higher.
Side discharge seed dispensers have been developed, but have problems. Previous side discharge seed dispensers, such as the Buckhorn seed box, used a different box shape, which prevented the seed from completely flowing out of the unit. The angled floor of the box allows proper flow of some seeds, but others have to be shoveled out by hand.
Today, seed boxes commonly have bottom discharge openings through which the seeds flow. These seed boxes have two distinct disadvantages. They cannot conveniently or safely be carried on a truck bed to the field. The bottom discharge outlet requires that the seed box be elevated, thus causing the truck be to become top heavy and often unsafe. Some manufacturers have engineered around this problem by using augurs or vacuums to move the seed from the bottom of the seed box to a level convenient for grower access. As pointed out before, this extra step in handling seeds can damage the seeds.